In honor of my dear friend Lauren Cataldo's 25th birthday and acceptance to grad school, her and I talked about her discovering her Vietnamese identity and family history. This episode is a hysterical and insightful look into Lauren's first quarter-century.
The guest for this episode is Lauren Cataldo, one of my best friends from college who has recently relocated to Seattle and is just celebrating her 25th birthday. Lauren grew up with a Vietnamese mother and Irish/Italian-American father in Binghamton, New York. In this show, Lauren discusses how her Vietnamese family came to America in 1975 as the Vietnam War was ending. We talk about how her cultural identity was shaped by a mixed race marriage and her mother's views towards embracing her Vietnamese heritage. Lauren's earliest Vietnamese food memories include her mothers egg rolls and spring rolls, which have a legendary status in her neighborhood; Lauren also doubles down on the importance of peanut sauce. Lauren's father's culinary escapades - or rather those of Chef Goulay - make an appearance as we discuss how she came to learn to like more foods as she got older. We discuss impossible-to-find banh mi in Dorchester, a simple comfort dish, massive feasts at a Buddhist temple and how we really don't know much about the Vietnam War, despite living in the wake of it less than 50 years after its conclusion.